Born 1940 in West Sussex, Hitchens was surrounded by art as his grandfather, Alfred (1861-1942), was a successful academic artist, and his father was the modern British artist, Ivon Hitchens (1893-1979). Hitchens attended Bedales School, Petersfield and studied at the Academy of Arts, Corsham.
Hitchens was directly influenced by the surrounding countryside, taking much inspiration from the South Downs. He was also inspired by his visits to North Wales and North West Scotland.
Hitchens major retrospective exhibition 'Aspects of Landscape' was held at Southampton City Art Gallery in 2020, presented paintings created over a period of more than five decades. His main subject and source of inspiration is the landscape of the British Isles, its hills and field patterns, woodland, sea, the night sky and forms in nature.
John achieved early acclaim in the 1960s and '70s when his work was represented by Marjorie Parr and Montpelier Studios, both in London. A series of successful exhibitions led to acquisitions of his work by many public and private collections in the UK and overseas. Since the 1990s John Hitchens' work became increasingly studio-based and abstract, but still influenced by the landscape of the South Downs and the woodlands that surround his studio and that he has known since childhood. The exhibitions's book traces the artists' journey from early descriptive paintings to increasingly abstract ways of interpreting landscape, reducing its forms to lines, circles and patterns. In his recent paintings John Hitchens has developed a unique personal form of abstraction and imagined landscape forms which sets it apart from conventional abstract painting. Much of this new body of work has never been exhibited and remains little known.
A 300 page monograph, 'John Hitchens, Aspects of Landscape' was published by Sansom and Co. in 2020.